Diaz Chile adds niche in online sales

The Diaz Farms produce stand started out as a 6'x6' table near the Hatch Highway NM Highway 26) in 1981.

Patriarch Ruben Diaz had come to the United States 30 years earlier under a laborer program, working first on others' farms, then as a sharecropper, then owning his own land.

Now, a small store, extensive online presence and acres of fields have transformed Ruben's family business into a 21st-century family dynasty.

"Back in the day, he was pulling a plow with oxen," son Eddie Diaz said, sitting in the family's store just past the junction of the the Silver City (US 180) and Hatch highways fifty years ago. The smell of chile permeates the air, floating up from bundles of the pepper stacked against the back wall. "And now he's sitting on a tractor with a GPS" to plow the rows straight.

The family chile business began in 1947, when a teenage Ruben Diaz left Jalisco, Mexico to work on U.S. farms for a few years. Ruben returned to Jalisco to get married in 1951, before coming back to Deming under the Bracero program. The program allowed the United States to temporarily import Mexican workers from 1942 to 1964.

Ruben started his own farm in 1961 with just 60 acres. Fifty-two years later, it has grown to become a three-generation operation with more than 1,600 acres shipping chile to all 50 states.

"The demand, it just seems like it keeps growing," Eddie said.

The farm even has a website with online ordering, a Facebook page with more than 1,000 "likes" and a Twitter account.

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The family produces about 1 million pounds of dried chile and 3,000 tons of green chile a year.

"Our name is well-known, but we're blessed to have good chile," Eddie said. "So it's the chile making the name, not us."

Ruben, three of his five sons - Sam, Eddie and Carlos - his son-in-law Art and their wives and children are all part of the operation. Diaz also has two daughters.

Sons grew up caring for animals on the farm, and their children grew up helping in the fields or the store.

"It's ingrained in the family," Eddie said. "Everybody had a taste of it."

He joined the family business in 1977 at age 18 and even met his wife at the farm when she came looking for chile rellenos.

Now, the family's third generation is figuring out its place in the business, grandson Joseph Holguin said.

"It won't be long before we have the fourth generation," Eddie added.

Joseph is part of the third-generation of Diaz Farms. He helped start the website, DiazFarms.com, and online chile sales, as well as establishing a social media presence for the business.

The family had always shipped chile out of state, to former New Mexicans who remembered the stand from their childhood or friends of friends who heard of Diaz chile via word of mouth. But the website and social media broadened that reach.

"That's kind of our niche, and we're working to supply that chile they really can't get," he said of out-of-state customers. "... The Internet helped us reconnect with people."

Not just technology has changed since Ruben started the farm. The Diaz family grows more varieties of chile than before and irrigation is easier.

There are also more financial and agricultural regulations to follow.

"Back in the day, you grew it and took your money," Eddie said.

The family hopes to soon offer frozen green chile as there is a small one- or two-month window for shipping the fresh peppers.

Ruben, 85, still works on the farm, helping in the fields while his sons run most of the financial operations.

"Retirement is not in his vocabulary," Eddie said. "He still cracks the whip ... He's doing what he loves and what he knows."

Joseph said his grandfather was a model of hard work for all the children in the family.

"My Tio Carlos told me, 'Look at your grandpa,'" Joseph recalled. "'If he can work that hard every day, you have no excuse not to.'"